Mimmo Rotella was fascinated by advertising posters and posters pasted on top of each other. In the 1950s, he began to remove posters, especially film posters and advertisements for everyday objects, from the walls during walks in his hometown of Rome and take them back to his studio. In his décollages, he partially tore off individual layers of posters, initially creating almost abstract compositions and then becoming increasingly figurative in his later oeuvre.
This is an early décollage of writing and scraps of letters. Several layers of superimposed black, red, blue and yellow paper, textured by torn edges and fine undulations, result in an abstract composition in which letters appear only as fragments and yet remind us that they were probably once part of a concise advertising message. The lettering loses its legibility and thus becomes pure form. These early décollages refer to the abstract painting of Tachism and can also be seen in the tradition of Cubism and Dada, particularly the collages of Kurt Schwitters.
Three years after the creation of our décollage, Mimmo Rotella joined the “Nouveaux Realistes”, the Parisian group of artists around the art critic Pierre Restany, which was founded in 1960 in Yves Klein's apartment and whose members were united by using everyday materials in their art. Alongside Yves Klein, the group included Arman, François Dufrêne, Raymond Hains, Martial Raysse, Daniel Spoerri, Jean Tinguely and Jacques Villeglé. Mimmo Rotella and César joined the group in 1961.
Mimmo Rotella played a special role within the group, as he always built a bridge to Pop Art by using images from advertising and mass culture. However, while Pop Art at best appropriated their subjects as motifs and heroized them, Rotella brought advertising from the urban space into art in a very physical way, with all the superimpositions, abstractions and shifts in meaning that result from the repeated pasting over and tearing off.
Pierre Restany wrote about a visit to Rotella's studio in 1958: “On the walls, I saw the entire world of the street subjected to a spectacular synthetic reduction: abstract collages of torn-off posters, a veritable festival of whimsical ideas of advertising typography, which had been reduced here to their raw material state.” ES
Décollage on masonite. 32,5 × 26,5 cm
(12 ¾ × 10 ⅜ in.). Signed in blue ballpoint pen lower left: Rotella. Signed, dated and inscribed with directional arrow and location details in blue ballpoint pen on the reverse: Rotella Collage (1959) 25 PASSEGGIATA RIPETTA ROME (ITALIE). [3068]
Mimmo Rotella was fascinated by advertising posters and posters pasted on top of each other. In the 1950s, he began to remove posters, especially film posters and advertisements for everyday objects, from the walls during walks in his hometown of Rome and take them back to his studio. In his décollages, he partially tore off individual layers of posters, initially creating almost abstract compositions and then becoming increasingly figurative in his later oeuvre.
This is an early décollage of writing and scraps of letters. Several layers of superimposed black, red, blue and yellow paper, textured by torn edges and fine undulations, result in an abstract composition in which letters appear only as fragments and yet remind us that they were probably once part of a concise advertising message. The lettering loses its legibility and thus becomes pure form. These early décollages refer to the abstract painting of Tachism and can also be seen in the tradition of Cubism and Dada, particularly the collages of Kurt Schwitters.
Three years after the creation of our décollage, Mimmo Rotella joined the “Nouveaux Realistes”, the Parisian group of artists around the art critic Pierre Restany, which was founded in 1960 in Yves Klein's apartment and whose members were united by using everyday materials in their art. Alongside Yves Klein, the group included Arman, François Dufrêne, Raymond Hains, Martial Raysse, Daniel Spoerri, Jean Tinguely and Jacques Villeglé. Mimmo Rotella and César joined the group in 1961.
Mimmo Rotella played a special role within the group, as he always built a bridge to Pop Art by using images from advertising and mass culture. However, while Pop Art at best appropriated their subjects as motifs and heroized them, Rotella brought advertising from the urban space into art in a very physical way, with all the superimpositions, abstractions and shifts in meaning that result from the repeated pasting over and tearing off.
Pierre Restany wrote about a visit to Rotella's studio in 1958: “On the walls, I saw the entire world of the street subjected to a spectacular synthetic reduction: abstract collages of torn-off posters, a veritable festival of whimsical ideas of advertising typography, which had been reduced here to their raw material state.” ES
